Chief Sports Writer, The Sydney Morning Herald

Mario Balotelli said last week that it wasn’t about him. Well, not just him. Some of it’s also about Italy.

"I hope this is Italy's World Cup, not Mario's,” he said in standard superstar third person, while wearing a black cap backwards, with two diamond studs in one ear and another stud in the other. “I'm not really interested in being compared with the big stars. In the end, it's the squad that wins. I don't want to be a big star. I want to win the World Cup."

The stars the Italian striker refers to are the likes of Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo. On the surface, Balotelli doesn’t have the discipline or headspace to shoot as high as them.

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Jose Mourinho calls him “unmanageable”. His mentor at Inter Milan and then Manchester City, Robert Mancini, calls him “craaaaazy”.

He said of Balotelli in April 2012: “I told him, ‘If you played with me 10 years ago I would give you every day maybe one punch in your head’. There are different ways to help a guy like Mario.”

Father figure: Roberto Mancini managed Balotelli at both Manchester City and Inter Milan. Photo: Getty Images

In that same month, Mancini backflipped: “I've finished my words for him. I've finished. I love him as a guy, as a player. I'm very sorry for him because he continues to lose his talent, his quality.”

Balotelli is an irrefutable star, just different to the rest. More Dennis Rodman than Michael Jordan. In terms of pure theatre, celebrity and outright Looney Tunes lunacy, Balotelli is a supernova, because he can outshine the rest of the galaxy at any moment.

Sometimes, Super Mario backs up the babble. Sometimes, he does not.

Balotelli struggled to make an impact against Costa Rica. Photo: AP

The clear example of this came before Italy’s second group match against Costa Rica, which they were warm favourites to win.

All of England certainly hoped so.

Knowing this, and having just watched Roy Hodgson’s team suffer defeat to Uruguay in Sao Paulo, Balotelli dangled the line in the water with his preferred mode of communication these days.

On fire: Balotelli scores against England. Photo: AFP

"If we beat Costa Rica I want a kiss, obviously on the cheek, from the UK Queen," Balotelli wrote in a tweet to his 2.36 million Twitter followers, just moments after the final whistle.

Some questioned if he had mistaken the Queen for Kate Middleton. As I heard one England fan ask on the plane from Sao Paulo after the England defeat: “Does he play for Italy or for Mario Balotelli?”

When it came to delivering, though, Super Mario failed to conjure the attacking magic displayed against England in Italy’s opening match.

Why always me: Balotelli after scoring against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2011. Photo: AFP

He barely touched the ball in the first 20 minutes against Costa Rica, fluffed two chances, and then was so absent in the second half he could’ve been mistaken for being lost on one of Rio’s dance floors. It can happen.

So while it’s not all about him, all eyes will certainly be on Balotelli when Italy meets Uruguay - and Luis Suarez, a striker who equally divides - in Natal on Wednesday morning (AEST).

Fanny Neguesha, fiancee of Mario Balotelli. Photo: Getty Images

Balotelli likes making statements. With a place in the round of 16 on the line, now appears the perfect time to deliver one. This is when the real stars - not just the dramatic ones - tend to shine brightest.

Oh, and Balotelli revels in making a statement.

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The one that stands out came three years ago when he was playing for Manchester City, and it was delivered in the middle of Old Trafford after he scored against Manchester United in a 6-1 derby win.

Balotelli, 21 at the time, lifted his playing strip to reveal a shirt underneath emblazoned with the words: “Why always me?”

It came a day after his house had caught on fire after fireworks had been lit in his bathroom, creating headlines all around the world. A week earlier, he had told the media he had “grown up”. A week later, he was named Greater Manchester’s ambassador for fire safety.

This is just one of innumerable colourful chapters during his career, which now sees him at AC Milan after his fallout with Mancini - although talk of a move back to the English Premier League with Arsenal whirs at this World Cup.

In 2010, he fired air pistols with friends through Milan's Piazza della Repubblica. Then he was photographed in the company of two Mafia mobsters. Then he was involved in a car crash days after signing with Manchester City. When the police ask him why he had £5000 on him, he reportedly told them: "Because I am rich".

There are stories of him driving into a women's prison during his time in Italy, and throwing darts at a youth team player during a training session. He later said it was a “prank”. Footage of him struggling to put a training bib on while playing for City went viral and saw him dubbed “Mario Bibotelli”.

The man is a tabloid writer’s wet dream.

Yet if you brush aside the headlines and the histrionics, and go back Balotelli’s formative years, you soon garner a better understanding of his complexity.

Mario Barwuah was born in Palermo, Sicily, in August 1990 to immigrants from Ghana.

“Mario had spent hours playing football in the rain,” his father, Thomas, told the UK’s Daily Mail on the eve of his arrival at Manchester City on a deal worth £29 million. “When the boys came in they were soaked but they were laughing and joking despite being wet. My friend said to Mario, ‘You really are Super Mario’. It’s the name we gave him.”

Around that age, on the suggestion of Italian authorities, he was placed in foster care to Silvia and Francesco Balotelli in northern Italy.

He visited his biological parents on weekends, but over time became indifferent towards them and drifted further away from them with time.

When he was 18, he gained Italian citizenship. He released a statement afterwards: “I am Italian. I feel Italian. I will forever play with the Italy national team.”

When Balotelli scored twice for Italy on their way to the final of Euro 2012, he rushed over and embraced his weeping foster mother, Silvia.

“He has never remembered us,” says Thomas Barwuah. “Not a birthday or Christmas, nothing. He is not the same boy I knew when he was younger — always laughing and smiling. He was trouble but in a good way.”

While his entangled background might partly explain his personality, many consider him the embodiment of Italy’s new generation of multiculturalism.

For Balotelli, that has been difficult.

Last year, while playing for AC Milan, Roma fans targeted him. He said afterwards he would walk off the pitch if it happened again.

Last month, he was racially abused by fans at a national team training camp near Florence, with one fan calling him a “f..king n….r.”

“They aren't used to seeing people who are different, not white, who act not as rebels but normally," he told the July edition of GQ. "I think what the ignorant people don't like is that people who are different are allowed to act that way.

"These stupid people, they get angry with me, they say horrible things, but I haven't done anything different from other people.

"I have made mistakes, like everyone does, and I have always paid for my mistakes. I think that if I was white maybe some people would still find me irritating or annoying but it wouldn't be the same. Absolutely not.

"Jealousy is a horrible thing, but when this jealousy is towards people who are different from the majority, and who maybe also have more than you, then it becomes anger, it becomes rage, and that's the overt racism."

Typically, Balotelli ventures into the match against Uruguay swathed in media interest, with Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger rumoured to have met with his agent in Brazil at the weekend.

AC Milan hasn’t ruled out the idea of selling him with vice-president Barbara Berlusconi admitting that “Balotelli is a great player and a real Italian talent, but nobody is irreplaceable”.

Balotelli has been conspicuously quiet since his performance against Costa Rica, but he did post a photo of himself on Sunday on Instagram.

“I want to smile again!” read the caption. “Even if it doesn't seem like it, I LOVE TO SMILE!”

The image was from last week’s press conference, of him wearing the black cap backwards, featuring three diamond studs, when he talked in the third person and tried convince all of us he had no interest in being a big star.

He'd rarely looked happier.

1 comment so far

Mario is a good footballer the rest of the stuff written about him doesn't interest me as much as it does the media who beat it up.